Connor's Gamble (26 page)

The backpack thunked against the table when she tossed it onto the center.  Alyssa's head shot up at the sound, a whimper escaping before she muffled it and Bethany laughed.  This was the part she loved the most—the terror.  Alyssa's strength and resilience had surprised her.  She'd expected the stupid cow to dissolve into a sobbing emotional heap, drooling and inconsolable.  Instead she'd taken the beat-down better than most of the homeless men who'd come before her.  That was something Bethany admired.  Strong women, ones who stood up to her, were few and far between.  Too bad this one had to die.

The sound of the zipper's teeth seemed abnormally loud in the silence.  She flipped down the unzipped section with its specially constructed individualized slots and found exactly what she looked for.

Grasping the handle, she pulled free the smallest of three knives and held the blade up to catch the light from the candles and the flashlight, the glint of silver firing her blood.  The moment of truth was at hand.  One more text message to Connor, and she'd finish what she'd started.  The hole in his heart wouldn't compare with the giant gaping chasm in her soul, but he'd hurt.  He'd pay for Cap.  With his agony and loss, maybe she'd finally be able to sleep without the killing rage devouring her from the inside out.

The knife clenched in one hand, fisted by her side, she picked up the phone in her other and sauntered back to Alyssa.

“Glad to see you back with me, sweetie.  Wouldn't want you to miss the grand finale.”  With a flick of her finger, Bethany switched the camera back on record.

“Let's get this show on the road, shall we?”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Sunday

“R
emy, man, it's bad.  Worse than I let Connor know.”

Aw, dammit, whenever his brother, Max, got that tone in his voice, it was never good.  Doom and gloom.

“Spit it out.”

Max's voice echoed on the phone line, a burst of static obscuring half of his words.  Remy picked up a few, like “fire”, “foster parent”, and “disappeared”, but the rest was garbled and unintelligible.

“Bro, I didn't catch half of that.  Lemme call you right back.”

Disconnecting the line, Remy waited a few seconds and redialed.  Max picked up on the first ring.

“What the hell is going on, Remy?  If this bitch who has Alyssa really is Julie Jameson, Connor's woman is in for a world of hurt.”

Remy thrust his foot down harder on the gas pedal, pushing the speed up well into the eighties.  Catching up with Connor just became priority number one.  His brother didn't rattle easily.  He'd been a cop for too long, seen too much on the job.  If Max said Julie Jameson was bad news, things were going to hell in the proverbial handbasket.

“Give it to me, bro.”

“Cap's daughter, Julie, apparently got into several scrapes when she hit her teen years.  Most of it minor stuff, and Cap's control was pretty rigid.  Needed to be—she went off the rails big time when she turned fifteen.  Liked to catch the neighborhood pets and . . .”  His voice trailed off and Remy heard papers flipping through the phone line.  “The court records were sealed but I know a guy.”

Remy smirked.  Yeah, right.  His brother knew a lot of “guys”, had access to more information than most professional hackers.  Like the game show, when the chips were down and you needed to phone a friend, the first call better be Max Lamoreaux.  There hadn't been a single time Max hadn't come through with the info when Remy needed it.  He'd stopped asking a long time ago where all the info came from.

“She spent two short stents in juvie for torching animals,” Max said.  “Doused them with gasoline and lit them on fire.  A real piece of work, this girl.  Cap got her straightened out, had her in counseling, and things looked promising.  The kid kept her court dates, and the records were 'expunged.'  Then Cap died.”

“I don't like where this is headed, bro.  What happened to Julie afterward?”

Max sighed.  “What usually happens to a sixteen-year-old kid when her only parent dies and there's nobody else around?  She went into the system.”

“Dammit.”  Being a vice cop—okay right now technically he was a suspended vice cop, since Captain Hilliard took exception to his unauthorized chat with Mickey Trejo—Remy knew what happened to kids, especially teenage girls who went into the foster care system.  “She ended up in a bad situation?”

“No, she got placed in a good, stable home.  Three other foster kids, loving, supportive foster parents who'd produced excellent results.  Structured, comfortable.”

“Hmm.  Still waiting for the other shoe to drop here, bro.”

“She did well for the next few months.  Clean record, follow up social worker visit records show a teenager who grieved her father's death but seemed to be adjusting well to her new situation.”

“Man, spit it out already.  I'm speeding to catch up with Connor.  I can't be that far behind him, so get to the point.”

“Chill, dude.  I'm getting there.  Julie appeared to settle well into her new foster home.  Got along well with the other kids, all around the same age.  Ditched the Goth girl wardrobe and straightened up her act.  Problems started right before her seventeenth birthday.”

Remy swerved around a slower minivan, cursing under his breath at the big orange signs posted along the right side of the road.  He'd come upon the construction Connor mentioned in his earlier call.  Lifting his foot off the accelerator, he slowed, merging into the congested traffic snarl.  “Seventeenth birthday, got it.  Bottom line, what happened?”

“The foster home where she lived burned to the ground.”

“Whoa—accidental or arson?”

“Definitely arson.  Five bodies recovered from the rubble, two adults and three teens.”

“Lemme guess—no Julie Jameson.”

“Bingo.”

“So where'd she go?  She couldn’t just vanish.”

Max paused.  “That's exactly what she did.  Disappeared without a trace.  Nobody's seen or heard from her since the day her foster parents died—until today when Alyssa gave her name to Connor.”

“Okay, let me think.”  Remy speculated aloud, knowing Max would follow his train of thought.  “Julie Jameson kills—unfreakingbelievable—her entire foster family and disappears.  Can you say sociopath in training?  The girl obviously drank the special Kool-Aid.”

Remy sighed, rubbing a hand across his eyes, before cursing.  “Now years later, Bethany Banks emerges, fascinated with doing an on-camera story about a senior group on their annual gambling junket.”  He paused, counting mentally.  “Number two, her bottle of sleeping pills is used in Molly's suspected overdose.  Three, Alyssa gets kidnapped and Bethany Banks is somehow connected to or is this rebellious teenager who may or may not be a sociopath.  So, is this Banks/Jamison woman responsible for everything?”  Remy scrubbed his hand across his face. 
Damn this case gets more and more convoluted with every passing minute.
  “Have I covered everything so far, bro?”

“Yep, that seems to be the pattern.”

“Why?  That's the question.  Wait. . . aw, hell.  Max, what's the one thing all of these things have in common?”

“Connor.”  Max drawled, coming to the same conclusion that Remy had.

“She blames Connor for Cap's death.”

The sound of more flipping pages whispered through the Bluetooth earpiece followed by a muttered curse.  “That's my take on it, too.  How do you want to handle this?”

“I should meet up with Connor within the next half hour or forty-five minutes.  First, I gotta call NOPD, have them work on this new angle.  Maybe they can get more answers from Trejo—he's the one who gave me Jamison's name in the first place.  She didn't give him her real name while they were hooked up, butTrejoe was smart enough to check her out, discovered her real persona.  Son of a bitch really loved her, too, Max"  Remy sighed before continuing.  "I'm worried sick about Alyssa.”

Max sighed.  “Me too, bro.  I have no idea what might set off somebody like this Banks woman.  When I was with the Shreveport PD, we dealt with a sociopath.  Strangest case I worked there.  Guy was charismatic, charming, and made himself indispensable to everyone around him.  Until you did one tiny thing that could send him into a silent killing rage.  He kept a whole group of women slavishly devoted to his every need.  Never saw anything like it.”

“Obviously you caught the guy.  What happened?”

“One of his women missed a phone call from him.  No big deal, right?  Within twenty-four hours she'd been terrorized to the point she hung herself.”

Damn
, Remy thought.

Max continued.  “This guy starts whispering to his other devotees about this woman and set them on her like a pack of hounds on a rabbit.”

“You sure she killed herself?”

“Couldn't prove otherwise, but he might as well have loaded a gun and shoved it in her mouth and pulled the trigger.”

“Please tell me he's rotting in prison.”

“Nope.  It's been five years and they're still doing the legal two step.  The DA isn't giving up, though.”

“If Bethany Banks is a sociopath who killed her foster family. . .”  Remy shuddered at the thought, chills raising goose bumps along his skin.

“Alyssa's life is in danger.  One wrong word could set of a ticking time bomb, destroying her, Connor, and anybody else who gets in Bethany's way.”

“Max, you can't tell Connor any of this.”

“Remy, he needs to know what he's walking into.”

“If he hears this, whenever we find out where Bethany or Julie or whoever the hell she is has Alyssa, Connor's going to storm the place, and we'll have an unmitigated disaster on our hands.”  Remy slammed his foot down on the accelerator, ignoring the speed limit signs.  He had to find Connor before Bethany dragged him any further into her spider's web of lies.

“Give Connor the basic facts, nothing else.  I'll tell him anything else he needs to know once we have more info.  Maybe we're reading this whole thing wrong—maybe Julie Jamison and Bethany Banks are two different people and our speculation is just that—speculation.”

Remy heard Max's muttered oath, could picture his brother stomping around his cluttered French Quarter P.I. office.  He knew Max, knew he'd follow his lead on this, since he wasn't on the scene.  Remy's gut instinct, the one every good cop listens to, screamed they were on the right track and Connor and Alyssa weren't prepared for the kind of agony and terror barreling toward them like a freight train from hell.  He prayed he'd catch up to Connor before Bethany taunted him one time too many.

“Okay, good luck, bro.  I'll call you with any new info.”

Remy hung up and drove toward Baton Rouge, the steering wheel gripped tight beneath his sweaty palms.

“Please, Connor, don't do anything stupid.  I'm on my way, and we'll make the sadistic bitch pay.” 

Chapter Thiry-Four

Sunday

B
ethany stood behind the tripod holding the cell phone, keeping the lens angled directly at Alyssa.  The steady light indicated the phone recorded everything happening.  She glanced through the viewfinder and made a slight adjustment to the angle, leveling the pitch a miniscule degree higher.

Alyssa's breath caught in her chest, realizing Bethany's torment of her was shifting into a higher, more desperate stage.  She hurt everywhere from the earlier beating.  Bethany's physical assault had shocked her, the way Bethany seemed to revel in the torment and pain she inflicted on Alyssa's bound, helpless body.

Bethany's whole demeanor underwent a one-hundred-eighty degree turnaround when Alyssa had blurted out her real name to Connor over the phone.

Bethany strolled around in front of the camera and leaned forward with an evil chuckle, standing in front of Alyssa and obscuring her from view.

“Well, Connor old buddy, since Alyssa let the cat out of the bag, you know who I really am.  Looks like we'll need to speed our timetable up a bit, won't we?”  Spinning around, Bethany glided behind her captive's chair with a slow predatory grace.

Alyssa jerked as Bethany's hands rested on her naked shoulders.  Bending at the waist, Bethany placed her head next to hers so they were aligned side-by-side.  Alyssa tried turning away but Bethany grasped her chin in a strong grip, wrenched it back around toward the camera.

“Be good, Alyssa.  Smile for Connor.”

“Please stop this, Bethany.”  Alyssa's whispered plea gained her nothing.  Bethany ignored her frantic struggles against the duct tape binding her to the chair.

“Talk to Connor, Alyssa dear. Tell him all your deep, dark secrets.  Share your
feelings
.”  Bethany's bitter emphasis on the last word ratcheted up Alyssa's dread.  Screaming denials raced through her mind, and she compressed her lips, biting back any words.

 “Here's your chance to bare it all for him.”  Bethany glanced at Alyssa's nude body and chuckled.  “Well, I guess you've already bared it all for him, haven't you?”

Bethany grabbed a hunk of Alyssa's hair and yanked hard. 
Damn, that hurts!
  Her scalp burned from the vicious tug.  Alyssa kept her lips tightly closed, biting down hard on her lower lip to keep from screaming out at the pain.

“You have two minutes, you sanctimonious bitch.  I'm sending this little video clip to your ex-hubby so here's your last chance.  Clear up all those pesky misunderstandings while you've got the chance.  Tell him how wrong you were, how you threw away your marriage on a lie.”  Bethany patted Alyssa's cheek, the blow landing against her already swollen face hard enough that she couldn't hold back a wince.

“You and your perfect marriage.  At the first hint of trouble you bailed so fast you practically left behind skid marks.”  Bethany tisked.  “It was almost too easy.”

She squatted in front of Alyssa, looking her dead in the eyes.

“I'm feeling magnanimous since I'll get everything I want, so I'll give you one shot.  Connor will get final directions soon and we both know what's gonna happen when he gets here.  So here's your last chance—clear the air—tell him know how big a screw-up you've been.  You won't get another.”